It is called Tatsunoshima,
the Island of the Dragon. It lies curled in a 'C', with its back
to the rough Japan Sea and its feet stretched towards Iki Island
across a mile-wide channel. Its moods are changeable . . . and
sometimes deadly.

During the summer months
the Dragon is warm and friendly; vacationers flock by the hundreds
to nestle up to its white sand belly and row boats in the clear,
quiet waters of the protected bay. Katsumoto village, a community
on the northern coast of Iki Island, makes most of its summer
money catering to these visitors and tourists.

During the winter months
of February through April, however, the Dragon shows its grim
side. Amid human shouts, high-pitched whistles of dolphins in
distress and sounds of frantic splashing, the crystal water turns
a brilliant red. The dragon bloods its kill: the annual dolphin
slaughter has begun.

It hasn't always been
thus. Until just a few years ago Tatsunoshima was used only by
vacationers and other visitors who sought contact with their
Shinto past; the small, uninhabited island is designated a
national park. Its serene beauty summons up an image of ancient
Japan. This image changed abruptly in 1978, when the fishermen of
Iki Island thrust Tatsunoshima into world prominence by
slaughtering over 1,000 dolphins, drawing cries of anger and
protest from around the globe.

I caught my first glimpse
of Tatsunoshima in August on 1978, through the forest of masts in
Katsumoto harbour. I was there to talk with Niichiro Kashii, head
of the Katsumoto Fishermen's Co-operative, in order to understand
the fishermen's position concerning the slaughter of dolphins. I
found Kashii-san to be a gentle, gracious host who made a genuine
attempt to understand the furore the dolphin slaughter had caused
abroad. He made every effort to explain to me the fishermen's
viewpoint.

I was already aware of the
extent of dolphin killing in Japan. In 1975 I had toured Japan as
part of a marine studies course. My particular interests were
Japan's whaling industry and marine pollution. I learned of the
extensive dolphin 'fishery' while talking to dolphin researchers
at Tokyo University. At that time the primary reason for dolphin
slaughters was food and, to a lesser extent, fertilizer and oil.
The situation in Iki was rather different: the main issue was
competition for limited resources.

For over ten years local
fishermen had complained of dolphins scaring away the buri
(yellowtail tuna) and squid. After asking for, and being denied,
help from their Government, they took matters into their own
hands. Dolphins were herded into the deep cove of Tatsunoshima,
barricaded by nets at the bay's mouth, and methodically
slaughtered. To the fishermen, who saw their profits dropping
yearly, there seemed no alternative.

When I told Mr Kashii of
my interest in finding an alternative to the slaughter he was
receptive to the idea, although sceptical about whether it could
succeed.

I returned in December of
1978, financed by the Fund for Animals and Greenpeace. I took with
me Jim Nollman, a specialist in interspecies music. In addition; I
also took along ajacques Cousteau film which showed the fishermen
of Mauritania co-operating with dolphins to catch fish, which, I
hoped, would illustrate to the local fishermen that co-operation
was possible. Accomplishing this, we would journey to the fishing
area and use Nollman and his instruments to attempt to attract
dolphins to our boat. Jim had been successful at this very thing
before in both California and Mexico, and we hoped that a
successful demonstration here would convince the fishermen that
co-operation with dolphins, as opposed to competition, was worth
exploring further. The film was a great success, sparking the
interest not only of Kashii but of the village children as well.
Unfortunately, the attempt to attract dolphins drew a blank. There
were no dolphins in the area at that time.

We did, however, attract
considerable media attention. Our attempts to communicate with the
dolphins in the hope of finding a solution to the Iki 'dolphin
problem' received nationwide, and quite sympathetic, coverage on
two of the three top television networks in Japan.

My next visit to Iki and
the Dragon Island came the following March. This time I took along
Frank Robson from New Zealand. Robson, author of the book
Thinking Dolphins, Talking Whales, had demonstrated amazing
success in communicating empathetically with dolphins. While head
of the dolphin-training programme at Marineland in New Zealand, he
did all training by communicating directly with the dolphins,
eschewing both whistle and food rewards. The performances of his
dolphins remain unexcelled to this day.

The plan this time was for
Frank to try to communicate to the dolphins that they should stay
on the periphery of the fishing banks, leaving the centre to the
fishermen; thus any fish trying to escape the dolphins would head
straight for the fishing boats. The dolphins would be able to
catch the fish they needed while acting as a sort of living net to
help the fishermen. It was much like the method of the fishermen
and dolphins in Mauritania.

Again the media showed
considerable interest in the project. Frank was shown on NHK, the
national TV network, as he talked to dolphins at an oceanarium
near Tokyo. The dolphins took an obvious interest in him,
appearing to understand what he was saying. Frank, a grandfatherly
figure, has been a fisherman for forty years. He understands the
problems ofthat way of life..We headed for Iki with high hopes of
bridging the gap between the fishermen and the dolphins.

We were too late. The
dragon had spread its claws. The week before we arrived fishermen
had conducted a dolphin round-up and had slaughtered some 400
dolphins. For the duration of our week-long visit, the only
dolphins to be seen at Tatsunoshima were dead ones.

It wasn't, however, an
entirely wasted trip. We made several trips to the fishing banks
with the fishermen and saw, at first hand, the methods used to
catch the buri and squid. Hardy Jones, of the Breach
Foundation, recorded it all on film. At these fishing banks the
truth of the situation became apparent: the problem was, very
clearly, not one of too many dolphins but of too many fishermen.
The fishing banks were literally packed with boats, giving
fishermen little room to manoeuvre. We learned that as other
fishing grounds around Japan became fished out, more and more
fishermen were converging upon these banks. In the last three
years alone the number of boats fishing this small area had
increased by more than 200. It was an obvious case of overfishing,
and the dolphins were being made the scapegoats.

The dolphins migrate
through these waters annually on their way north in the Japan Sea.
They are in the area for only two or three months. The fishing
banks the Iki fishermen claim as their own have undoubtedly been
dolphin feeding stops for thousands, possibly millions, of years.
Despite the fact that the dolphins obviously have prior claim to
fish resources here, any solution to the conflict would have to be
agreeable to the fishermen.

The closer we looked at
the situation, the more clearly we could see the problems the
fishermen were facing. I visited a buri farm on the island.
I learned that the culture of buri, a quality fish that
fetches a premium price in Japan, is a booming business - so
successful, in fact, that it is undercutting the buri
fisheries. The bulk of buri sold in Japanese markets is
cultured. To make matters worse, the buri farms obtain
their buri fry, called mojako, from the spawning
areas near Kyushu. Hundreds of tons of the tiny fish are netted
with small-mesh nets, some to be sold directly as food in the
markets nationwide, the rest to be sold to the buri farms.
Thus fewer mojako survive to become adult buri and
migrate up the coast to the Iki fishing banks. Along their path up
the Kyushu coast the mojako, who hug the shoreline, pass
numerous industrial centres, including Minamata, the 'home' of
mercury poisoning, or Minimata disease. The mojako are very
susceptible to chemical pollution, especially mercury. It became
apparent that overfishing was only part of the problem.

In one respect the
fishermen were probably correct: there weren't enough fish
left for both humans and dolphins. Yet, as a human problem, it had
to have a human solution. Punishing the dolphins was as unfair as
it was ecologically foolish.

Fortunately, a number of
potentially workable human solutions presented themselves during
my subsequent research, and in November of 1979 a telephone
petition urging the implementation of these dolphin-saving
alternatives was directed to the US (because of the tuna-dolphin
problem) and Japanese Governments. As a part of that campaign, a
proposal I had drawn up was delivered to various Japanese
government agencies. This proposal included: a dolphin-damage
insurance plan, designed to reimburse Iki fishermen for any
financial losses caused by dolphin intervention, with the dolphins
remaining unmolested; government assistance to Iki island to help
establish appropriate aquaculture and mariculture programmes as
alternative occupations, thus ensuring jobs and food supply on a
continuing basis; government assistance in the construction of
artificial reefs and buri hatcheries to rebuild the
devastated buri population around the island;
government-enforced reduction of the number of fishing boats
allowed in the area to an ecologically sustainable number. The
Japanese government was already spending huge amounts in dolphin
bounties, machinery and foreign public relations in order to
perpetuate the slaughter; these suggested programmes would provide
a way to spend this money that would solve the problem of the
dolphins and the fishermen.

On my final visit to Iki,
in February 1980, I planned to follow through with this proposal:
to get the endorsement of the Iki fishermen, if possible, and to
press for government action.

I didn't get the chance.
The day my family and I arrived on Iki, we learned they were
already herding the dolphins in towards Tatsu-noshima. The next
morning we arranged to journey to the Island of the Dragon.

The scene that met us was
straight out of Dante. Between about 800 and 1,000 dolphins were
in the cove, many beached and dying a lingering, agonizing death.
Others were caught in the nets, struggling to get their blowholes
above the water's surface to gasp for one more breath. On the
beach hundreds more lay dead and dying, blood gushing from spear
wounds in their sides. About sixty fishermen were busy with the
massacre. While some, dressed in full wetsuits, waded in the
chest-deep, blood-red water catching the dolphins and tying ropes
to their tails, another twenty or so pulled in unison on a stout
rope. A writhing dolphin, pulled by the tail flukes, slipped and
slid over the bodies of her friends and relatives and lay gasping
and whistling on the beach, while two or three men with spears
jabbed until blood came gushing forth. At any moment a dozen or
more dolphins were heaving in their last struggle, their life
flowing red into the sand. My wife, Suzie, and cameraman Howard
Hall constantly changed angles, recording on film this ghastly
side of the Dragon Island.

We learned that the
fishermen would receive a bounty of $80 per dolphin, half of this
paid by the Japanese Government. Dolphin meat, not normally a part
of the Iki diet, was being promoted in a full-colour pamphlet
produced by a government agency. A huge $147,000 grinding machine,
purchased with government assistance, was being employed to grind
the dolphins into a mush that would be used as pig feed and
fertilizer.

What had begun two years
ago as a desperate move by the fishermen had now become a
profitable business. Watching the giant grinding machine do its
grisly work, I knew all my efforts to find alternatives had come
to nothing.

The following day most of
the fishermen occupied themselves by grinding up the dolphins
slaughtered the day before. I spent the day buying necessary
equipment and that night, in the teeth of a building storm,
paddled a small inflatable kayak a mile across the channel to
Tatsunoshima, where some 500 dolphins were still awaiting
execution.

Untying three ropes,
severing one, I opened the jaws of the Dragon. As the winds
reached gale force, I realized I would be unable to paddle back to
the main island. It was just as well. There were dozens of
dolphins left stranded on the beach as the tide fell. I spend the
rest of the night helping them to deeper water and the chance of
freedom.

Not all the dolphins
escaped. Some were injured, and some, I feel, simply made the
choice not to abandon loved ones. By the time the fishermen
arrived the next morning approximately 250 dolphins had found
their way out of the nets to freedom.

I was turned over to the
police by the fishermen and subsequently charged with forceful
obstruction of the fishermen's business. I spent the next three
months in solitary confinement at Sasebo prison. During this time
my trial proceeded.

At my trial Milton
Kaufman, of the Fund for Animals and Monitor International,
testified to the ecological short-sightedness of such dolphin
slaughters and the worldwide reaction to Japan's policy of dolphin
eradication. Peter Singer came from Australia to testify to the
philosophical and moral implications of the dolphin slaughters.
Buddhist teachings of reverance for sentient life were discussed,
as well as the fact that the small island where the slaughters
took place is a national park where such killing is strictly
forbidden.

My lawyer, Manabu Arioka,
who volunteered his services, tried to apprise me of the
differences between Japanese law and US law. I was still caught
off-guard. Japanese law allows a judge to refuse bail to anyone
who does not have a permanent address in Japan. The trial judge
would not accept my Tokyo address as permanent because, as I was a
foreigner, my permanent address must, by definition, be abroad. He
refused bail. My lawyer objected that such reasoning would deny
bail to any visitor to Japan, which would contravene Japan's
constitution guaranteeing equal treatment under the law,
regardless of nationality. The Judge's response: 'But Mr Gate is
not just any visitor to Japan. He has committed a crime.' Aside
from the rather circular reasoning, this incident taught me that
in Japan, once you are charged, the assumption is that you are
guilty, although theoretically you are innocent until proven
guilty. There is no jury, and the judge has complete autocratic
power. He is not bound by precedent, as are US judges. He has the
authority to credit or discredit any testimony or line of
reasoning, without explanation.

This system has some
obvious disadvantages, but it also has some advantages. Because
the judge has control of the outcome of the trial, he may feel
less constrained about what he may allow as testimony. It is
unlikely that in a similar trial in the United States the judge
would allow a philosopher to testify concerning animal rights. In
fact, Peter Singer's testimony on the dolphins' behalf is, as far
as I am aware, the first time such testimony has been allowed in a
criminal court anywhere.

The Japanese system also
allows a defendant personally to cross-examine any witness. This
was especially useful, as I had very little time to confer with my
lawyer before entering the courtroom. He had slight knowledge
either of dolphins or of my activities concerning dolphins in Iki
or anywhere else. He had volunteered his services out of a
conviction that what the fishermen were doing was wrong and that
my actions were morally and legallyjustified. The trial took on a
two-level aspect: I dealt with the moral and philosophical
implications, while Mr Arioka dealt with strictly legal matters.
For the most part it was an effective division of labour. The
greatest problems were in the area of communication. They were
quite frustrating.

The court interpreter had
a fair command of English, which in most situations, I'm sure,
would have sufficed. However, in this situation there were many
concepts quite foreign to the Japanese way of thinking. It was
very difficult to communicate our view of the dolphins to the
judge. In several instances I intercepted rather serious
misinterpretations, even with my meagre knowledge of Japanese. The
interpreter had a very difficult time with the concept of ecology,
and when he translated testimony concerning the intelligence of
dolphins the courtroom, filled with Japanese reporters and
onlookers, burst into laughter. Obviously something was lost in
the translation. The judge asked Peter Singer, 'If these dolphins
are so intelligent, do they go to school?' It became evident that
the philosophical gap between the Japanese and the Westerners was
even greater than I had realized. Most of my discussions with
Japanese had been with the small minority who shared my views
concerning ecology and with a few who even shared my concern for
the cetaceans. Even these balked, with very few exceptions, when I
talked of dolphins as the 'people of the sea'. The thought that
any other creature, besides humans, might have language, might
have thoughts as sophisticated as ours, might have similar
feelings, was totally unacceptable. When I mentioned the size and
complexity of the cetacean brain, the judge responded with, 'If
dolphins are so intelligent, why do they lead American tuna boats
to schools of tuna, only to meet with death themselves?' I didn't
know whether to try to correct his misapprehension of the
tuna—dolphin situation or to try to deal with the intelligence
issue further - or to give it up as a lost cause. The only thing
that kept me going was the knowledge that the courtroom was filled
with reporters, some of whom just might understand what I was
saying.

Perhaps the best
communications bridge was Uncle Harry Mitchell, a Hawaiian taro
farmer and fisherman, who came over to Japan at my request. He
talked with both the judge and Mr Kashii, head of the Iki
fishermen's union. I believe his down-to-earth Hawaiian wisdom did
more to communicate our concern for the dolphins and the
overriding concern for a healthy marine environment than could all
of our talk of ecology and animal rights.

In the end the whole trial
came to have the farcical appearance of a shibai, a
Japanese play. After three months in detention and six days in
court (the Japanese judicial system allows only two days in court
per month, hence the three month detention), the judge issued his
verdict and passed sentence. All defence arguments went by the way
as the judge limited his considerations to 'forceful obstruction'.
I was found guilty, given a six-month suspended sentence and
turned over to Immigration. During my stay in Sasebo prison my
visa had expired, so I was now labelled an illegal alien to be
held in detention for the duration of any appeal I might
undertake; if I signed a waiver of my right to appeal, on the
other hand, I would be deported immediately. After learning that
the appeal process can take three years or more, I signed the
waiver. I also learned that I had a choice over deportation: if I
paid for my own ticket, I could leave immediately; if I insisted
that the Japanese Government pay, there would be a delay of six
months, during which time, of course, I would have to remain in
detention. I paid.

After the trial I asked my
lawyer if he thought the outcome of the trial had been
predetermined by higher-ups in government. 'Oh yes,' he responded.
I asked what percentage of the cases that go to trial in Japan end
up in convictions. 'More than 99 per cent,' was his answer.

Since my return to Hawaii
I have frequently been asked, 'Was it worth it?' Certainly the
three months in prison did me no harm and probably did me some
good. The dolphin slaughters in Iki continued, although the
numbers killed the following years were 90 per cent fewer than in
1980. The fishermen reported that the dolphins were much more
difficult to herd into the nets.

Other dolphin slaughters
have continued in Japan and elsewhere in the world. I fear they
are on the rise. Just as terrestrial mammals have been forced off
their land and exterminated, so too are marine mammals
increasingly becoming the victims of unchecked human expansion. It
is a global problem. So to whatever extent my action served to
publicize the problem, it was worth it.

However, as I recall my
feelings and thoughts of 29 February 1980 I realize that these
things were not my major concern. I had witnessed my brothers and
sisters of the sea suffering and had had the opportunity to help
them. I had really had no choice. Was it worth it? Ask the
dolphins.

Tatsunoshima symbolizes to
me the plight of our planet. The friendly face of the Dragon shows
us the possibility of living peaceful lives in tune with the
beauty of our environment, of coexisting with all creatures,
including other people of all shapes and colours. The destructive
face of the Dragon consumes all in its path, cherishing no life
other than its own. Its self-centred rampage can have but one end:
extinction. The fire-breathing Dragon springs from the depths of
our reptilian past. Can we transcend the demon that lies within
us, or are we doomed to destroy our planet, this lovely island in
space? Maybe the dolphins have the answer.